Aaron Shepard’s Publishing Blog
Updates for Aiming at Amazon and Perfect Pages,
on Self Publishing With Lightning Source,
Microsoft Word, and Amazon.com
Even Better Graphics from Lightning Source
Feb. 25, 2008—Revised May 9, 2008
It was only in March 2007 that I reported on the new Océ presses at Lightning Source and the radical improvement they provided in grayscale graphics, including photos. In fact, I said the improvement was about 100%. But still, I pointed out, Lightning was screening at a resolution common to newspapers, so you shouldn’t expect offset quality.
Less than a year later, Lightning has upgraded their systems in a way that pretty much delivers just that. Screen resolution on interior grayscale graphics has jumped from 85 to 106 lines per inch. That may not sound like much, but it’s right in the range where a small increase makes a big difference. Where before the screen dots were easy to spot, they’re now small enough that you have to look hard to see them.
Lightning had the upgrade in place and began testing on Jan. 22, but it still hasn’t officially been announced—and in fact, it might not be. But even if and when it is, the catch is that not all books will get the advantage of it.
Your older files for interior content were converted by Lightning to a format known as AFP—Advanced Function Presentation—which was designed by IBM for production printing. With Lightning’s new system, though, new files are being printed direct from PDF. But Lightning can’t very well go back to PDF for your older books without your approval of the result—so you need to resubmit your interior files to have them printed via the new system.
A hassle? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes!
Note: I previously reported here that the key to getting the graphics improvement was to produce your PDF files to the specification PDF/X-1a:2001. This turns out to have been my own misinterpretation of confusing information. My new info comes direct from Lightning senior technical staff and is confirmed by my own testing. Submission of files to that spec is recommended by Lightning but is not required for improved graphics. All you need to do is resubmit your files.
In fact, if you’re using Word for the Mac, I suggest you avoid producing PDF files to any PDF/X spec. Without intermediate processing, this will convert your text from black to a medium gray and ruin it for printing!
P.S. I’m currently testing whether resubmitting will improve type quality in scanned books. If this interests you, check this post again in June.
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Dec. 19, 2007—Updated May 9, 2008
Though book covers from Lightning Source look just fine to most people, I haven’t been satisfied. I finally got tired of seeing strange artifacts on type under magnification and decided to figure out what was causing it and how to stop it.
I ran a series of tests, then described the fruits of my experiments on my Publishing Page in an article “Book Covers vs. Lightning Source” (since removed). Basically, it said that Lightning was rasterizing and screening all book covers, including the type, often with antialiasing. So, there was no way to get high-quality type on Lightning covers, and the only way to get clean bar codes was to let Lightning supply them later.
After posting that, though, I was contacted by Lightning Source with a request to talk to a senior technician. The resulting discussion was highly useful and revealing, as I discovered I was both right and wrong. Yes, Lightning often rasterizes covers, even when—as in my case, I was told—there is no apparent problem with them and they meet all documented requirements. But no, not all covers are rasterized.
What makes the difference? You have to follow Lightning’s recommendations as well as its requirements. Lightning Source cover technicians will rasterize an otherwise problem-free cover without notice or warning in these two cases:
1. It’s not built on one of Lighting’s custom templates, as generated on their Web site.
2. It’s not produced with Acrobat Distiller, as shown by Acrobat or Adobe Reader in the file’s Document Properties.
I’ve never liked using Lightning’s templates, so that was one strike against me. The second was that most of my cover files, created in InDesign, have been exported directly to PDF instead of printed to a PostScript file and run through Distiller. The files’ Document Properties, then, gave the producer as “Adobe PDF Library.”
Shouldn’t a direct export from Adobe’s own InDesign be good enough? It’s generally considered so, for any version from 2.0 on, but Lightning’s experience is that using anything but Distiller can cause problems. So, if they see a different producer identified, they automatically rasterize the file just in case.
Of course, I wanted to verify that making these changes would do the trick. So I sent my test cover through again, this time using Lightning’s own template and producing the PDF file with Distiller. Sure enough, the cover came back with perfectly smooth vector type and a squeaky clean bar code. Finally!
The moral? Do what Lightning recommends, whether it’s required or not!
As for those of you using Microsoft Word for book covers as detailed (but not recommended) in Perfect Pages, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is that Lightning will rasterize and screen your cover, because it’s not in a template. (Yes, I imagine there’s some way to work with Lightning’s template in Word, but it would be so convoluted, I’m not going to encourage it or even try it myself. Good luck, if you’re that ambitious.)
The good news is that your type will look decent anyway, as long as you avoid delicate typefaces. In fact, you don’t even have to bother with specially converting Word’s blacks with late versions of Acrobat Pro, which I prescribed as essential in earlier versions of my book. On a screened cover, the “pure black” you get with such conversion doesn’t even work as well as the “rich black” you can get without it!
So, if you want the best possible cover from Lightning, get a copy of InDesign and follow Lightning’s recommendations closely. If all you want is a utilitarian cover, Word will do the job nicely.
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Amazon Declares War on Lightning Source
Mar. 29, 2008—Updated Apr. 13, 2008
By now, you have no doubt read about the campaign launched against Lightning Source by Amazon and its print-on-demand company, BookSurge. Lightning customers are being threatened with Amazon no longer accepting direct orders of their POD books, leaving the books available only from outside sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace.
Since February, a number of author services companies (“self publishing companies”) and some larger POD publishers have been approached by BookSurge, telling them they can move their books to BookSurge to avoid having their “buy buttons” disappear. (Amazon Advantage and Amazon’s new Lulu competitor, CreateSpace, are apparently two other recourses for salvation.) One large author services company, PublishAmerica, has already refused BookSurge’s offer and seen most—not all—of its buttons vanish. (PublishAmerica books with a pub date after March 10 are still on sale, as you can see by a date sort at Sales Rank Express.)
Though it’s generally assumed that Amazon intends to stop direct selling of all incoming POD books, Amazon itself has never explicitly said so. Its language has consistently been vague on this point, never dealing in absolutes. With the alleged April 1 deadline come and gone, and with no new, recent approaches to Lightning customers, it’s quite feasible that Amazon has already gotten what it was after—namely, compliance from most of Lightning’s largest customers.
Yes, it’s more than possible that Amazon never intended to go after and doesn’t care about the many small, independent self publishers who cluster around Lightning Source, not even thinking to mention them in regards to its new policy. Or the public uproar over Amazon’s actions may have convinced it that pursuing results farther down the food chain isn’t worth the negative publicity. Or Amazon may even realize it can’t block all incoming POD books, since it wouldn’t take much for Lightning and Ingram to disguise new ones at least, given an end to Lightning’s direct feed to Amazon.
We don’t know. It’s true, we might wake up tomorrow and find all our buy buttons gone. Still, I advise all independent self publishers to hold tight and not rush to replace your current business plan. It may be good for many years to come. And if you’re just now ready to set up with Lighting Source, don’t let this deter you. Whatever happens with Amazon, Lightning will be a key element of any profit-based POD publishing plan for the foreseeable future.
I also encourage you not to “punish” Amazon by throwing your business to Barnes & Noble. Anyone who is not new to publishing should know that Barnes & Noble is at least as monopolistic a force as Amazon. Please don’t starve one monster by feeding another. In fact, if it hurts your own books—as it will, if you direct traffic away from Amazon, leading to a reduction in its recommendations for your books—then don’t try to starve the monster at all. Believe me, you’ll wind up hurting yourself a lot more than you’ll hurt Amazon.
I’ll update this post if and when things progress. Meanwhile, you can best follow developments by being a member of the pod_publishers group on Yahoo, at finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers. (Before posting on this topic, you should probably read some way back through the message archives.)
As most of you know, my book Aiming at Amazon is all about selling books to Amazon through Lightning Source at short discount—and I’m ready to help any Lightning publisher keep doing that. If and when you are threatened by BookSurge, or if and when Amazon stops selling your books without notice, please contact me privately for possible counteractions.
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Mar. 1, 2008—Revised Mar. 7, 2008
I’m hard at work on version 2.0 of Aiming at Amazon, and let me tell you, it’s quite a job. In the year and a half since the book came out, I’ve been haunting a couple of Yahoo! publishing groups, partly to figure out what my book was missing as indicated by the questions being asked, including by readers of my book.
Well, it seems like the book left out at least as much as it said, so I’m going back and filling in a lot. I also know at least 25% more than I did then, so I’m trying to add some of that too. And then there’s the stuff I simply didn’t have time to include, the first time around.
The upshot is that version 2.0 will likely be twice as long as the original! What’s more, both Amazon and Lightning Source have been moving at rocket speed, requiring rewrites of much existing material. So, maybe you get some idea of the magnitude of this project. In fact, I’m not quite certain I’ll manage to complete it at all.
But whether I do or not, I want to post here much of what I do manage, both for the benefit of my readers and to get your comments to help improve it. Please keep in mind, these are drafts only. They are not my final word on anything, so please don’t rely on their accuracy or clarity! (I was dismayed recently to learn that someone was still referring to my posted draft of the original book, ignoring the massive revision that went into the final product.)
Also, please don’t form final judgments about typography or design. The final book may not look anything like this!
Below is a list of links to chapter drafts, which will download as small zipped PDF files. I’ll add to the list as new sections become available, with the newest placed on top. Please comment through my contact form or by email.
Draft 2A (March 7, 2008)—“About the Book,” “Publishing for Profit,” “Becoming a Publisher,” “Working with Lightning”
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Feb. 23, 2008
Great news from Amazon! As I predicted months ago on my S.R.E. Blog, Amazon now allows authors to insert videos into their AmazonConnect posts. For a sample, click here.
Amazon will accept your video in any of a variety of formats, within limits of 10 minutes and 100MB. As with YouTube and Google Video, the video is resized if necessary down to 320 x 240 pixels, and also mercilessly recompressed regardless of what you do. For this reason, you need to provide a high-quality original with no more than light compression. Here are the settings I’ve found best on my Mac when compressing video from my camcorder with iMovie’s QuickTime export.
Video compression—H.264, 15fps, auto keyframe, medium quality (single pass), auto bitrate
Size—640 x 480, deinterlaced
Sound—AAC, Mono, 64 Kbps, 48.000kHz
Because of Amazon’s compression, your video should also have no more camera movement than necessary. That means shooting from a tripod or other stable base whenever you can.
Less dramatic than video but perhaps even more significant is that Amazon now also lets you insert custom images uploaded from your computer. See samples here and here.
For format, Amazon will accept JPEG, GIF, or PNG—the first time, I believe, that the two latter formats have ever been allowed. The marvelous thing about this feature is that the images can be displayed at up to 500 pixels per side, and Amazon will not resize them unless you ask. (As with cover images, you’ll get maximum impact by making your images as close to square as possible.)
However, Amazon will recompress them, so here too, you have to provide the highest-quality image to start with. Given the formats accepted, that means 24-bit PNG. As you can see from the samples, the quality you can achieve in this way is a good deal better than has ever before been possible on Amazon.
At this point, AmazonConnect can do much of the job of Search Inside in showing Amazon customers what to expect from your book—and in some ways, it can do it better. Just remember to limit the number of posts you assign to each book to three. As long as you don’t post more than that, your posts will stay up permanently as your sales pitch on Amazon’s page.
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Feb. 14, 2008—Updated Feb. 17, 2008
Those of you who are using Acrobat and have upgraded your Mac to Leopard (OS X 10.5) are likely to already know this: Leopard broke Acrobat’s print driver, destroying your ability to create PDF files through the Print dialog. This was true of all versions of Acrobat, including the current one.
I’m glad to say that Adobe has now fixed this. Acrobat 8.1.2 restores this capability. The bad news is that this is the only Acrobat version that is fixed. So, if you’re on Leopard with an earlier version of Acrobat, you’re out of luck.
Fortunately, that doesn’t mean you can’t create PDF files at all. You can still produce a PostScript file, then run it through Acrobat Distiller. And how do you create the PostScript file? The method described in earlier versions of Perfect Pages, it turns out, was changed in Tiger (OS X 10.4). The correct answer is to use the command “Save PDF as PostScript” (Tiger, confusingly) or "Save As PostScript" (Leopard, clear as day) on the Print dialog box’s PDF menu.
If you do decide to upgrade to Acrobat 8, there are some tricks to getting it installed and working at all. First, if you have a previous version of Acrobat that came with an uninstaller program, use the uninstaller. (Don’t worry, you won’t lose any custom Distiller profiles.) Then install Acrobat 8 but do not open it yet, because it will likely just crash. Instead, go to the Adobe Web site and download all the updates for Acrobat 8—three at this time, none of them cumulative. Apply each one in turn. During this process, you’ll probably see a message asking if you want to install missing components, like the Adobe PDF Printer. You’ll get another chance later, but at this point click “Cancel,” or you won’t be able to go on.
You’re now free to open the program, but you’re still not finished. From the Help menu, choose “Repair Acrobat Installation.” From your options, make sure “Adobe PDF Printer” is checked. I recommend not checking “PDFMaker Toolbar for Microsoft Office,” since this is not very helpful in the Mac version. When that’s done, I suggest you check for updates (again on the Help menu), click on the Preferences button in that dialog, and turn off automatic updating—which is probably what was causing the crashes in the first place. (It’s not uncommon, by the way, for automatic update checks to cause problems in Adobe apps.)
Also, if you have custom Distiller profiles created in previous versions, open Distiller, go to Library/Application Support/Adobe PDF/Settings, double-click each custom profile to open it, then cancel it. If you don’t open each one, they won’t show up among your choices, and you won’t see the PDF Options menu item in the Print dialog at all!
If you think this is a lot of trouble just to get the program functional, you’re right. Acrobat really blew it on this one.
By the way, it turns out there’s a neat trick for consolidating the gigantic number of font subsets Acrobat produces when embedding fonts from OS X, thereby simplifying the file and reducing its size. After creating your PDF file, just open it in Acrobat and print to PDF (or PostScript) again!
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Dec. 21, 2007—Revised Dec. 24, 2007
Last spring, I reported here that I would be experimenting with a 20% wholesale discount at Lightning Source, instead of my longstanding 25%. I had settled on 25% years ago when I found by experiment that Ingram and therefore Amazon.com too were imposing surcharges on books with any lower wholesale discount. So, 25% is what I’ve recommended for years, including in Aiming at Amazon, and loads of Lightning publishers have followed my advice.
Earlier this year, though, I heard of some publishers setting a 20% wholesale discount at Lightning and getting away with it. Had things changed? With a healthy 5% at stake, I decided to find out.
I’ve now had most of my books at 20% discount for several months in both the U.S. and the U.K., and I’m happy to report I have seen absolutely no negative effect. Neither Ingram nor Amazon has imposed a surcharge, and my books are selling on Amazon just as before. The discount change has likewise not affected my books’ Amazon availability status, search results placement, or Also Bought positions. And though I don’t follow BN.com closely, all my books seem to be selling normally there as well, most of them with 24-hour availability.
In other words, the change has not affected my sales in any way I can tell. The only difference is that I’m making more money!
So, start your New Year right and tell Lightning Source to switch your books to 20% wholesale discount. The best way is now through the “Submit Revision” feature, chosen from the My Library menu. Select your book, then on the next page click on “Request Price Change.” (Thanks to Fred Zimmerman and Larry Yudelson for alerting me to this new procedure!)
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New Article on Word 2007Dec. 12, 2007
I’ve taken all the posts about Word 2007 from my MS Word/Book Design Blog and consolidated them in a new article, “Books, Publishing, and Word 2007.” The rest of the posts from that blog have been merged back here.
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May 7, 2007—Updated Oct. 15, 2007
I’m starting to get questions from readers about Amazon’s weird pricing for my books. Why do some of my books now have small discounts? And what are those “sourcing fees”? Is that the result of my current experiment with a 20% wholesale discount at Lightning Source?
The answer to that last question is no. That experiment is just barely off the ground, and only for three books so far, and I have not yet seen any negative effects. But this and a number of my other pricing experiments seem to have run afoul of new bugs in Amazon’s pricing and discounting software.
Briefly, Amazon.com now seems to have started discounting books with wholesale discounts as low as 25%—or at least it’s experimenting with it. But while changing their software, they seem to have messed it up. Amazon is presently not responding correctly to price and discount changes.
For instance, a couple of months ago, my book The Business of Writing for Children was listed at $12 with a 25% wholesale discount. To my surprise, I saw Amazon discounting and selling it for $10.58. Then I tried to change the list price to $10. When that appeared at Lightning and Ingram, Amazon changed the list price on its site, but continued to sell the book for $10.58—the $10 list price, plus a $.58 sourcing fee!
In other words, Amazon’s discounted prices seem to be stuck. And in some cases, Amazon hasn’t changed the list price either. In fact, the price of Aiming at Amazon was supposed to have gone down by several dollars, but Amazon refused to lower it. I wound up raising it back up so Amazon wouldn’t be taking the extra dollars for itself.
In still another case, my changing the wholesale discount from 25% to 20% hasn’t stopped Amazon from continuing to offer an 8% discount. It’s probably losing money on that book.
Of course, the sourcing fees make me look bad—the big Amazon expert sitting here with sourcing fees on his books. And some of my books are selling for too much, which discourages sales. Sigh. I pray to the Amazon gods to fix it all soon.
Update—The random discount shifts seem to have mostly cleared up—possibly due in part to intervention by Morris Rosenthal. But Amazon is still running about three weeks behind in adjusting discounted price after publisher price and discount changes.
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Oct. 1, 2007
In my book Aiming at Amazon, I talk about several steps to setting up your own publishing business so you can bypass the “self publishing companies” that act as middlemen and instead work directly with Lightning Source. But it appears that most of what I recommended to do is no longer needed.
Lightning Source used to flatly state that they worked with publishers only, not directly with authors. But at least in the time since my book came out, they’ve changed their tone. Their Web site still encourages authors to consider an “author services” company—another term for “self publishing company”—but it also says you can work direct with Lightning if you like.
That doesn’t mean that working with Lightning Source has become as easy as working with, say, Lulu.com or iUniverse. Lightning still won’t help you put your book together—you have to supply print-ready files. Lightning also says you’ll need a high-speed Internet connection (presumably for file transfer, though you can instead send files on disk). And one business requirement I cited still holds: You must acquire your own ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers, the standard identifiers of the publishing industry).
But more formal procedures like registering a business name with your local government and opening a business checking account can be skipped, along with getting a resale license. Of course, these may be helpful or even legally required for some activities, such as selling books direct to customers. But just for publishing through Lightning Source, you can do without.
There’s one procedure, though, that I recommend strongly, even if it’s no longer required: creating a publisher name for your dealings with Lightning Source and others. You’ll avoid confusion and get a lot more credibility than if you use your personal name. And besides, it’s more fun!
By the way, when you fill out Lightning Source’s application online, you’re asked for up to three ISBN prefixes assigned to you. These are not full ISBNs but just the digits that appear in common for all ISBNs in a set. For instance, for a set of 10 ISBNs, the prefix would be the first 11 out of 13 digits. As a new publisher, you will probably have just one set with one prefix, so that’s all you’ll fill in.
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Oct. 1, 2007
In version 1.8 of Perfect Pages (see the copyright page for the version number), I finally broke down and vented about what I’d earlier hoped was just a short-term problem in Word 2004 for the Mac: crashing from simple editing operations. In longer files such as for books, Word 2004 would crash on me after such basic actions as copying, cutting, and pasting. Updates came and went, but the problem persisted. So, I finally labeled Word 2004 as unstable and prescribed safeguards that no author or publisher should have to live with.
But I was wrong. It wasn’t really Word’s fault at all. By chance, I discovered that Word’s crashes were due to a little utility I’d added to my Mac called Butler—in a Beta version, no less, as if I didn’t know better. And not even by Butler in general, but by one feature that I wasn’t even using but hadn’t bothered to turn off: multiple clipboards. In other words, whenever I asked Word to copy or cut, Butler was duplicating the function for itself. Word wasn’t prepared for such interference, so it just quit. Perhaps Word could have handled it better, but I can’t really fault it.
So, to set the record straight: Word 2004 is extremely stable in normal use. And as I said in Perfect Pages, it’s the best version for publishing ever produced for the Mac. Forgive me for accusing you!
By the way, I’ve been playing with the private Beta of Word 2008 for the Mac. I’m not allowed to disclose details, but I’d like to assure you that Word 2008 does not follow Word 2007 for Windows down the road to a ruined interface. There’s still much room for improvement, but once the bugs are worked out, this should be even better than Word 2004.
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Sept. 25, 2007
I’m compiling an Aiming at Amazon Hall of Fame—a list of self-published books that have been helped by my own book. The complete list will be posted here on my Publishing Page. A selection, plus a link to the complete list, will be displayed permanently on my book’s Amazon page in an AmazonConnect post.
If you have a book you launched with the help of Aiming at Amazon and would like it on the list, please send it. Only one title per publisher, please. You must have used Lightning Source either to publish the book originally or to reissue it, and you must have done this after you read my book. Please include the following info, preferably for a paperback edition:
Title
Author
Publisher
Publication month and year
ISBN-10 (for linking to Amazon)Thanks! This is an ongoing listing, so if you won’t have a title for me till later, send me the info when it comes out!
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May 16, 2007—Updated June 11, 2007
I recently got a copy of Acrobat 8 Professional. Here’s why you might want to upgrade: The Preflight feature has been beefed up and can now actually fix problems in your PDF, instead of just reporting them. You can even convert PDFs to specific standards, like PDF/X-1a, which Lightning Source requires for color books and recommends for all covers. You can also create a custom profile—say, to check your PDF file against all specifications required by your print service.
Here’s something to watch out for: The Facing Pages view, now called Two-Up, does not automatically put odd pages on the right, with the title page standing alone. You have to request this by selecting View > Page Display > Show Cover Page During Two-Up. In Acrobat 8.0, the program reverted to the default with every new document, but this has now been fixed with 8.1
I have a few more notes for Mac users: If you have custom Distiller settings files from previous versions, you’ll have to move them. Previously, Acrobat stashed them in the system’s Library/Application Support/Adobe PDF/Settings. Now you have to transfer them to your user directory, in Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings. Also, though you’re supposed to be able to run Acrobat 7 and Acrobat 8 side by side, their Adobe PDF printer functions conflict. Finally, be warned that Adobe’s new activation system is wonky. After activating the software, I could not access activation and deactivation commands on the menu.
In the end, this trouble with the activation feature concerned me enough that I uninstalled the program and went back to Acrobat 7. I don’t want to become dependent on any program that I might lose access to because of poor functioning. And Adobe’s record with such schemes is already poor. I’ve already had to deal with a couple of old Adobe programs that refused to start up because they were trying to contact Adobe servers that weren’t responding properly. (That’s why you should turn off automatic updating on older versions of Adobe programs.)
By the way, here’s a small correction for Perfect Pages. In regard to directly creating a PDF by printing to the Adobe PDF driver in Windows, I said it makes no difference whether or not you choose “Do not send fonts to ‘Adobe PDF’” in the driver’s properties—an option that in Acrobat 8 becomes “Rely on system fonts only, do not use document fonts.” Actually, keeping this option checked can speed up the process, because Acrobat doesn’t have to check for fonts in the document. But this works only if the document is formatted entirely with fonts found on your computer. If the document includes embedded fonts from elsewhere, you must uncheck this option so Acrobat can get to them. This could include a font embedded in an EPS graphic.
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Mar. 13, 2007—Updated Aug. 28, 2007
In my book Aiming at Amazon, I talk a great deal about customizing your book cover image and uploading it directly to Amazon. In fact, I consider it one of the two best tools I discuss in the book.
So, it was with some chagrin that I recently heard from readers that Amazon had stopped offering FTP access info to authors and small publishers. The change was sudden and seems to have affected sites in all countries. Email addresses for obtaining FTP info have simply vanished from Amazon publisher guides.
How does Amazon expect you to supply book cover images now? There are several standard ways still offered.
1. If you’re a publisher, through your Amazon rep. Unfortunately, this applies only to established companies doing significant business with Amazon and bowing to their onerous business terms. Those are the only ones that have reps.
2. With a form available to Amazon Advantage members on that program’s site. The book itself does not have to be part of the program—and in fact, you don’t have to have any books registered at the moment. But you do need to be a member, which means having registered at least one book at some point.
3. As part of the Search Inside program. This allows you access to a special form on Seller Central.
4. Through your publisher or wholesaler or distributor. For instance, if you’re publishing with Lightning Source or an affiliated “self publishing company,” you can send an image there or to Ingram’s ipage. But that also means that any new image coming later from Lightning or Ingram will replace your own. And you may have less leeway in submitting an image that’s a different shape from your book.
For many authors and small publishers, none of these are good solutions. Is there some way to still use FTP, even if Amazon is limiting its use?
Apparently yes. Existing accounts still seem to work. And what I learned while researching this issue was a real shock.
In my book, I chastised anyone who gave out access info from a private FTP account. But my criticism was misplaced. What I’ve discovered is that there are no “private accounts.” For any country Amazon sells in, Amazon has no more than a few standard FTP accounts and has handed out info on them to anyone who wanted it. The Amazon-supplied passwords I’ve so zealously guarded have been used by thousands of others!
No, I’m not going to post any FTP access info on this site. Though I don’t believe I ever agreed not to, I don’t imagine Amazon would like it.
But I will tell you this: Search the Web on “ftp.amazon.com” and “ftp-1.amazon.com” (with or without the quote marks). You’ll find several username/password combinations that will get you to the promised land. And remember that images submitted to the U.S. (or any other country) will migrate to all Amazon sites worldwide.
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May 4, 2007
If you’ve invested a lot of time and thought in customizing Word and your own templates, you don’t want to lose any of these customizations to file corruption. So, it’s just as important to back up your custom settings files as it is to back up your documents—or more so. Word for Windows doesn’t make it easy, though. These files—including your own templates, by default—are located in invisible folders.
To access these files more easily, you can tell Windows to show invisible files and folders. This is done on the View tab of the Folder Options control panel. In recent versions of Word, you can then find the templates in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. The general Word settings file is in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\Office.
In Word 2007, your Quick Access Toolbar settings file, Word.qat, is in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office. Custom Style Set templates are in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\QuickStyles.
For your custom templates, you can instead use the File Locations options to place them somewhere more accessible for backup—though, in Word 2007, this will make them less accessible when you’re creating a new document.
On the Mac, you don’t need to deal with invisibility. In recent versions, to find the default location for custom templates, go to the application's folder, then the Templates folder, then My Templates. On the Mac too, this location can be changed in Word preferences, but without penalty. For other Word settings files, go to your user folder, then Library, then Preferences.
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Apr. 27, 2007
Recently, I’ve been getting questions about “hidden fonts” in PDF files created by Acrobat from Word—fonts that were not purposely inserted, cannot be located, don’t embed properly, and cause the files to be rejected. So, if you have a version of Perfect Pages earlier than 1.6 (as shown on the copyright page), here are some expanded notes on font embedding.
To make sure your PDF files appear and print as you expect, choose to embed and subset all fonts, and remove all font names from Acrobat’s “Never Embed” list. If asked for a percentage limit for subsetting, choose 100% (except with Acrobat 3, which should be told 99%). Subsetting prevents your print service’s software from substituting a different version of the font.
If your Word document includes an EPS or PDF vector graphic with type, make sure the font has already been embedded in the graphic. Otherwise, the font might not make it into the PDF file.
It’s important to use either Acrobat or the free Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) to check the fonts embedded in your PDF file. From the File menu of either program, choose “Document Properties” and then “Fonts.” If you don’t see all expected fonts in the listing, try first scrolling through the document. What you want to read beside each font name is “Embedded Subset” or similar.
You may sometimes see more fonts listed than you expect—for instance, if you accidentally applied a font somewhere in the text, or copied text with a different font from another document. If so, you can find it in the text with Word’s Find command. Put your cursor in the “Find what” box, but don’t enter anything, not even a space! Instead, use the advanced Format settings at the bottom of that dialog box to choose the font you want to search for. To tell Word to replace that font with another, place your cursor in the “Replace with” box and use the advanced Format settings again.
Stray fonts can also be part of Word’s default formatting of automatic elements, such as bullets or numbering in lists, or reference marks in footnotes or endnotes. Though Word lets you change this font in its dialog boxes for these automatic functions, there’s generally no need if the font is embedding properly. You may remember, though, that I said fonts may not embed properly when used for automatic bullets and list numbers, which is one reason I advise adding such elements manually.
By the way, these fonts for automatic elements can’t be found with the Find command, because they’re not actually in the text! If you can’t figure out where they are and must find them, first make a copy of the document just for testing. Then delete parts of the text, testing for the problem at each step, till you have it pinpointed.
Occasionally, you may find a font that is restricted so that it will not embed. In that case, you’ll have to replace the font. But this problem should not arise with fonts that came with your operating system, Word, or most other programs.
I’ve said that Distiller for Mac OS X generates bloated files, and you’ll see that in this fonts list, with a separate subset of each font for each page on which it appears. That makes a very long list! Also, Acrobat on the Mac may substitute Arial for Helvetica—but don’t worry about that. The two typefaces are pretty much identical.
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Apr. 2, 2007—Updated Apr. 6, 2007
Yes, I know that Perfect Pages should have an index. I knew it when I published it without one. So, why hasn’t it had one? Because I thought that revising the index for updates of the book would be too much hassle and would discourage me from updating at all. And why did I think that? Because I didn’t know how easily and how well I could index and re-index the book with Microsoft Word’s automatic indexing!
But now I know that, because I’ve used automatic indexing on a couple of other books. So, I’ve gone back and indexed all six versions of Perfect Pages to date! I’ve also written a whole new chapter on how to index automatically with Word.
I’ve included all these indexes and the new chapter in an Indexing Update, which you can download with the link below. It’s for Perfect Pages versions 1.0 through 1.5. (You can find your version number at the bottom of the copyright page, following the title page.) Later versions won’t need this, because it will already be in the book.
Enjoy!
Update—A revised version of this update, 1.1, was posted on April 6.
Indexing Update (Zip, 1MB)
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Mar. 28, 2007
Several years ago, when I was experimenting with different wholesale discounts at Lightning Source, I discovered that 25% was the lowest practical discount I could offer. The reason was that Ingram added a surcharge to the book’s list price if that discount was any lower, and this surcharge was carried through to Amazon. A 20% wholesale discount at Lightning meant a 5% surcharge at Ingram and Amazon.
For this reason, I recommended 25% in my book Aiming at Amazon, and most Lightning publishers of my acquaintance have come to the same conclusion. Recently, though, I’ve been hearing of Lightning publishers setting a 20% discount—and getting away with it. It seems that at some point, Ingram stopped adding the surcharge for books at that discount—which is also the lowest discount they now accept. And there seems to be no penalty at Amazon either.
It seems time, then, to reevaluate the standard 25% discount that so many Lightning publishers now use, and to decide whether 20% is better. I’m not ready yet to make that recommendation, but I plan to test the lower discount over the next few months to see if it’s really safe. Meanwhile, if you care to experiment yourself, I’d be happy to know the results.
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Mar. 20, 2007
Some of you have been using my Amazon sales rank checker, Sales Rank Express (formerly called Sales Rank MultiChecker). I’d like to announce the next generation of that checker, now available in Beta at the same address.
It’s now several times as powerful, with a lot more information presented, and a lot more convenience in looking for it. Here’s a list of some of the info available for each book (with up to 10 books displayed per page).
Sales rank
Customer rating
Number of reviews
Date of last review
Basic metadata, as it appears on Amazon
List and sale prices
Amazon discount
Copies in stock
Availability
Summary of offers
Top pairing
Other formatsYou can search by author, publisher, title words, ISBN (10-digit or 13-digit), or any combination of the four. Within the results, you can then automatically look up the same info for all formats of a title (paperback, hardcover, etc.), or for the book’s top ten pairings (the competing and complementary titles used for Also Bought lists, exit offers, etc.). Searches for pairings can be chained, so you can check each book on your Also Bought list to see if you’re on that book’s list too!
Sales Rank Express has separate forms for each of Amazon’s countries—U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, and Japan—so it’s easy to check your books on sites even where you don’t know the language. There’s even a “Fix Data” button for each book in each country, to bring you right to Amazon’s correction form.
The site includes full documentation that not only describes how to use Sales Rank Express but also describes much of the significance of the data and how it relates to the inner workings of Amazon. For instance, you’ll learn that the figure Amazon reports for copies in stock can often be used to view sales almost in real time. You’ll also learn that this figure does not always equal the number of copies in Amazon’s own warehouses! (This figure, by the way, is not currently available on Amazon itself or anywhere else but Sales Rank Express.)
And it’s all still free.
Try it and let me know what you think!
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Mar. 17, 2007—Updated Mar. 19, 2007
In both Aiming at Amazon and Perfect Pages, I talk about the telltale low resolution and general low print quality of the Lightning Source black-and-white presses, which made photos and other grayscale images unattractive and made type look like it came from an old 300-dpi desktop laser printer. All this has changed with Lightning US’s recent replacement of those presses with the state-of-the-art digital press Océ VarioStream 9210. (Lightning UK hasn’t made the switch yet, but is slated to do so.)
All B&W books from Lightning US are now being printed on the new presses, and I’ve had a chance to compare before-and-after printings of several books. There’s been a definite change—some of it good and some bad, with a couple of surprises.
First let me say that the improvement in the quality of photos is dramatic—I’d say about 100%. Contrast and texture are MUCH better. The quality is good enough that I would now for the first time consider doing a B&W book in which photos play a major part. Not as dramatically, the quality is improved for other grayscale graphics as well, and even for Lightning’s B&W scans of screened photos for reprints.
But let’s be clear about one thing: Lightning Source is still screening with a resolution common to newspapers. As much as the photo quality has improved, it is still only about half as good as in average offset book printing. So, you can now confidently use Lightning for instructional or documentary photos, but not for anything demanding high quality.
I’m always bemused that Lightning Source publishers are so concerned about quality of graphics and hardly ever care about type quality. To me, the roughness of type edges in Lightning Source books, noticeable even to the naked eye, has always been a dead giveaway of the book’s POD origin. It has also tended to limit appropriate type choice to robust typefaces in large font sizes. So, I was very anxious to examine type quality from the new presses. (Despite what you might think from my POD books, the Georgia typeface is not really my favorite.)
Here the result is more mixed than with graphics. Type edges are definitely smoother, both to the naked eye and magnified. But they’re also less distinct, with microscopic dots of ink placed beyond the characters’ borders. In large font sizes—say, around 12 pt.—the type does look much improved. You really can’t tell with the naked eye that it’s POD. But at smaller sizes, the type can have a slightly fuzzy look. (I might be sticking to 12-pt. Georgia after all.)
Beyond print quality, there are two surprising side effects of the different toner used in these presses. The first is obvious as soon as you unpack a book sent right from Lightning Source: The book smells. Bad. Like chemicals. Yuck.
This smell dissipates after a few days, but I feel sorry for Lightning Source employees. I hope for their sake that they have a great ventilation system and that this odor is not as toxic as it seems. I also won’t be surprised if I get some customer complaints, since many Amazon purchasers will get my books within two or three days of their being printed. (That’s because of Amazon’s drop shipping arrangement with Ingram.) For anyone like me who normally loves the smell of new books, this odor is definitely a turn-off.
The second side effect is more elusive. I noticed at some point that I was getting a little glare off the white pages of one book. I wondered a little at that, but assumed it was coming off the paper. Then in another book, I noticed I was getting it with the crème paper too. What gives?
On close examination, I found that the paper was as dull as ever. The glare was coming off the print!
That’s right: The toner from the new presses is glossy on the page. On graphics, this isn’t really problem—in fact, it probably helps a bit, just as glossy photos look better than matte. But depending on the angle of your light source, it can actually make the type a bit harder and less pleasant to read. It also provides a new, though different, sign that the book is POD—if the smell doesn’t give it away first. Sigh.
So, there you have it: the new face of print on demand. Two steps forward, and a step or so back. Let’s thank Lightning Source for keeping up with the latest POD technology, while hoping that the next generation of presses comes even closer to what we need.
Update—Just heard from Lightning Source that, in the next few weeks, they’ll be launching a “second phase quality upgrade” for the presses—new software?—that should improve photo quality even more.
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Feb. 20, 2007
In Aiming at Amazon, I discussed the “weighting” that Amazon.com was applying to books in regard to its Also Bought lists. To the best of my ability to judge, this favoritism was boosting books with higher list prices and books sold to Amazon on more favorable terms—which discriminated against pretty much all books going through Lightning Source and its affiliated subsidy publishers, among others. This weighting began last summer and grew particularly heavy in December.
I’m very happy to announce that Amazon has responded to complaints and been correcting the situation. Throughout the past few weeks, the weighting has been gradually removed and the Also Bought lists have already returned to normal, or nearly so. Lightning Source books and lower-priced books are once again able to compete fairly with other books on Amazon.
The word from Amazon itself is that this distortion of the Also Bought lists was never intentional! Whether this is true or not, it’s a great relief to see that it’s past.
While trying to deal with Amazon’s discrimination, I experimented with increasing my wholesale discount and raising my list prices to compensate. Though I now plan to return to a short discount and lower prices, I learned some interesting things. Above a certain price level, a 55% discount at Lightning Source will reliably get you discounted on Amazon.com, and in just a few days. Note that a 50% discount won’t have this effect—it must be a full 55%.
The amount of the discount depends on the range that the list price falls into. Though I don’t guarantee the exact boundaries, here are the current rough ranges. (Note that the figures I give may not apply to books that received their discount in the past, or to books with different distribution. For instance, a book that I temporarily added to Advantage as an experiment was discounted LESS.)
Below $3.50—“Sourcing fee” added
$3.50 to $9.49—No discount
$9.50 to $14.49—20%
$14.50 to $24.49—32%
$24.50 to $49.49—34%
$49.50 and up—37%I also have these more tentative figures for the U.K.:
Below £5.25—No discount
£5.25 to £9.25—20%
£9.25 and up—34%If you have some reason to offer a standard discount instead of a short one, you can use this info to figure exactly what price Amazon customers will pay when you set your Lightning Source book at a certain list price and a 55% discount. For many books, it also shows that you can set a standard discount and raise your list price, and wind up with Amazon customers paying about the same amount while you lose very little profit.
For instance, a book at $10 and 25% short discount could be changed to $15 at 55% discount. Amazon’s discounting would bring the book back down to $10 for the customer, while your profit loss would be minimal. (I call this “Plan B,” and I’ll write about it in the next update of Aiming at Amazon.)
By the way, setting a 55% discount at Lightning Source had NO effect on the discrimination at Amazon, possibly because they get 50% to 55% from their favored publishers without giving up the percentage taken by Lightning. Even putting a book into Advantage didn’t help.
On the other hand, raising my prices did seem to help on the Also Bought lists—but only if it lifted the book to the next discount range, as given above. So, raising a book’s list price from $10 to $15 was a definite help, while raising one from $15 to $20 was not. Judging from the placement of some books on the Also Bought lists, I believe it would have helped greatly to raise a book from $15 to $25—but I never got that far in the experiment before Amazon fixed itself.
Let’s hope we never have to deal with this again!
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Amazon Links InfoThe Amazon links info in Aiming at Amazon has been updated (twice) and posted on this site as the article “Linking to Amazon.” Among other things, it describes Amazon’s beginning support for ISBN-13.